For the analysis of liquids, in particular in bio-analytics, it is necessary to pick up defined small volume of liquids in a container, to transport the liquid and to analyze the liquid. For this process of manipulation, transportation and analysis of liquids in the container conventional methods only use mechanical forces and pressure differences. These conventional forces bare the risk to damage the liquid containing structure, for example mechanical and pressure forces can break glass capillaries. This may cause problems as biological liquids may be hazardous, expensive and/or laborious to obtain. Breaking the liquid container may therefore result in additional work, costs and risks for the user.
Furthermore, the conventional ways to hold samples in place mainly comprise mechanical means. In addition to the aforementioned problems, further problems arise of the samples and/or the samples not being in a precisely defined position when measurement is performed. This may result in inaccurate measurements. This is particularly problematic when the measurement comprises optical investigation of the sample. Due to this, time consuming and costly re-measurement may be required. Also devices using mechanical means to manipulate samples have to fit exactly to the geometry of the sample container. Thus for every different sample container geometry a different mechanical adapter is needed, restricting the economic use to a very limited range of sample container geometries and sizes.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or ameliorate these obstacles. In particular, it is an object to provide a device which allows for easy to use measurement of chemical and/or biological fluids. It is a farther object to provide a device which allows for these fluids to be conveniently and precisely positioned in a holder to perform optical measurements of said fluids.
The objects of the invention are accomplished by the independent claims. Further preferred embodiments are defined by the dependent claims.